Here's a 7-minute video of Rachel Maddow on January 19 talking about how President Obama's personnel assignments and plans for Afghanistan really aren't that different than his predecessor's. She interviews Bob Herbert of the New York Times who also disagrees with Mr. Obama's plan to increase troops there.
Here is a new web site called Get Afghanistan Right. They oppose military escalation in Afghanistan and support non-military solutions to the conflict.
5 comments:
If we had just gotten Bin Laden in the beginning, all of this would be unnecessary. We are worried about losing the war on terror and how we will look if we pull out, well, in a sense, we have lost the war on terror. It is a victory for the terrorists to know that Bin Laden still breaths and that we live in a constant state of fear. Every time we elevate our threat level the panic that ensues is almost as damaging as an attack itself. The radicals feel a sense of victory every time some grandma has to be frisked to get on a plane. We shouldn't worry about losing afghanistan, we should worry about losing our identity as a nation.
Now, the power of Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership has lessened, but the power of the Taliban itself has grown, because the people feel they answer some immediate needs in areas like Waziristan and Swat. Col. Ann Wright of Code Pink says she supports the Karzai plan of trying to bring certain elements of the Taliban into a coalition government.
Here's my problem with that: Long before 9/11, the Taliban was blowing up priceless historical sites and beheading people for reading "unclean" literature. Today, they are beheading locals in Swat for owning DVDs or satellite dishes. International negotiators always talk about providing a "place at the table." I think that some groups like Taliban, Khmer Rouge, Sendero Luminoso, etc. absolutely deserve no place at the table, because their very belief structure is intolerant and inhuman. We always hear about modern military trends "dehumanizing" adversaries, but I'm proud of denying the humanity of certain groups like Taliban.
The question is, what alternatives do we have between the negotiating table and the armed UAV drone? Here's a thought experiment: if the US Defense Department developed a fail-safe weapon that could analyze a brain-wave pattern for adherence to catastrophist or intolerant belief systems and could instantly lobotomize that brain, would it be appropriate to use such a weapon?
Oh, I should mention, I helped the Flobots/Fight With Tools folks produce a three-hour community organizing session Monday (Feb. 2) in a History of Nonviolence class Steve Handen teaches at Colorado College. The class had a special visitor Monday - Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness/Center for Creative Nonviolence in Chicago! She talked a lot about opposing UAV use in Pakistan/Afghanistan, and she was really enthused with the Flobots' organizing model.
I already feel that President Obama is displaying muddled thinking about all this. I am not at all pleased. We have to sharpen our thinking about these things, because if politics does the thinking, we won't progress fast enough. I agree that some groups have no right to be treated humanely, and if they're not dealt with, they will go on treating people in the least humane ways.
Loring, you go! Did you get the class on video? 3 hours is kind of long, but it would be so great to share it with the youtube world. These connections are going to build and get stronger, and the non-violence voice will grow louder. Yes!
Those classroom situations don't seem appropriate to video. And technically, you need to get signed permission from every student. I was trying to be low key.
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